Yesterday, me & 3 frens decided to venture to the lesser explored part of tiny Singapore. The place is a marshland, spanning 87 hectares in the northern part of singapore... called Sungei Buloh. Before we went, we researched on how to get there. There's supposely a shuttle bus at 60mins interval to pick visitors at Kranji MRT. We waited for the bus at 10am, but it never arrived... then checked out alternative SBS Bus 952, only to our horror...the special loop service that can drop us at the doorstep operates only on Sunday! No choice but to hire a cab to ferry us in.
Fine, so we strolled into the reserve after paying $1 entrance fee each (only applies to weekends) and started on Route 1. There were 3 designated routes to cover the park. After trekking about 3Km, we arrived at a pond...At the entrance, a sign reads: Beware Crocodiles! Suddenly, we saw some movements in the water...& I shouted " It's a croc!'' At the same time, from the grasses besides us, a monitor lizard creeped past! We all screamed & ran!!! Then, the 'croc' in the water disappeared. After claming ourselves, we realised that the 'croc' i saw is actually a gigantic monitor lizard lah! We used our binoculars & spotted it resting beneath the bushes at the opposite end of the pond... it is about 2m long! My god, we have never seen such a huge monitor lizard! Walking on, we reached a 18 m tall tower hide - Aerie, that offers us a panoramic view of the surroundings! Cool! After climbing 72 steps to reach the top, the gentle breeze sooths us... We can even see our neighbouring country, Johor Bahru.
After the rest at the Aerie, we continued our nature walk and arrived at the 575 m raised boardwalk. We tried to look out for the migratory birds but to our dismay... we only managed to spot a couple of kingfishers and egrets...which i thought was herons. Along the boardwalk, another little surprised caught us... we spotted an otter swimming in the waters. We wanted to snap a pic of it, but its agility dodged us as it quickly splashed back into the waters... After numerous attempts, Noel managed to capture a close-up shot of the playful otter. ZF was good at spotting the otter whenever it surfaced to the waters. At one point, the otter actually peeked at us from the waters beneath the planks we stood on ....
Two hours plus past as we covered the 2 major routes and progressed to Route 3, which only had a freshwater aquatic pond with some tortoises basking in the waters under the warm mid-day sun. We trekked abit futher and saw another monitor lizard...this time was on land. This looked smaller so I carefully and silently walked near it to shoot its' picture!
We wrapped up our 1 day nature trail with a group photo of us at the main entrance... and our legs were all aching at the end of the walk. Now, if people ask me about Sungei Buloh, I know what it is about...haha!
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